FORT COLLINS — You would think that after making his mark as a bruising star hockey winger during his childhood in Germany and through his junior season playing for Cheyenne Mountain High School in Colorado Springs, Kevin Davis would find football aggressiveness a natural.
Yet after Mike Bobo and his staff took over at Colorado State, one of the new coaches’ major challenges was directed at Davis, who as a versatile fill-in linebacker got a lot of playing time in 2014 and seemed destined to start this season.
Play tougher. Be meaner. Step up.
“I think Kevin Davis has the size, he’s got the athletic ability, he’s very smart,” Bobo said Monday of the 6-foot-3, 240-pound Davis. “He’s able to make checks and communicate to the linebackers and the safeties, which you have to do in our defense. … We challenged him in the spring to be more physical.”
How’s he doing?
“I’m really, really proud of Kevin and how he is progressing,” Bobo said. “He has to continue to do that.”
With the Rams switching from the 3-4 defense to the 4-3, Davis has stepped in for the graduated Aaron Davis — no relation — at weakside linebacker.
Davis had three tackles, 1½ for losses, in a 65-13 rout of overmatched Savannah State in the opener. He even scored the Rams’ first touchdown of the season, recovering a bad Savannah State snap in the end zone on the second play from scrimmage.
After that virtual dress-rehearsal game, Davis and the Rams will get a much more legitimate test against Minnesota on Saturday at Hughes Stadium.
“It’s exciting, another opportunity to show how good we are,” Davis said. “We definitely respect them as a team. They played very good against TCU the other night (losing 23-17), so we’re excited.”
Davis was raised in Germany, where his father, Keith Davis, was stationed in the Army and his first sports were soccer and hockey. His mother, Marion, is German and the family was in Germany until Keith Davis was brought back to the U.S. when Kevin was 8. Kevin still speaks fluent German and has many relatives on his mother’s side of the family in Europe, where he has visited often.
By the time he was in high school, attending Fountain-Fort Carson, his dad was stationed in Colorado and the family put down stakes in the Colorado Springs area. Because Fountain-Fort Carson didn’t have a hockey team, he played for Cheyenne Mountain in that sport. He was the Indians’ leading goal scorer as a sophomore and junior before deciding to concentrate on football, where he was an all-state choice for Fountain-Fort Carson.
Now, his German relatives try to fathom him playing American football.
“Some through Facebook,” he said. “That’s as close as they can get to watching the games, really.”
He said he hasn’t played even drop-in hockey since dropping the sport, and conceded: “I miss it. I kind of regret not playing my senior year. … I’ve gone to public skating, and that’s about it.”
Footnotes. Sophomore quarterback Nick Stevens on Monday was named the Mountain West offensive player of the week. He was 20-for- 28 for 289 yards and five touchdowns against Savannah State. … Bobo indicated that the injury senior tight end Kivon Cartwright suffered Saturday isn’t serious. “There’s definitely not major stuff,” Bobo said. Cartwright was granted a medical-hardship sixth season of eligibility in March after playing only in the opener against Colorado last season and soon after that undergoing ankle surgery.
Terry Frei: tfrei@denverpost.com or
